Professor Pieter S Kritzinger

Emeritus Professor




Fields of Interest

Modeling and Analysis of Concurrent Systems
Email: psk [at] cs [dot] uct [dot] ac [dot] za
 
 

I obtained an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1968 and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1972. I subsequently became an Assistant Research Professor for 2 years in the Computer Science Department at Waterloo. This was followed by 2 years of teaching at the Department of Computing, of Imperial College in London before returning to South Africa to become a Senior Lecturer at Stellenbosch University. In July 1985, after spending the previous year as a Visiting Scientist at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, I was invited to join the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town (UCT) as a Full Professor. I was Head of the Department from 1987 to 1996 and that department was one of the first at UCT to produce a strategic academic plan before such activity became popular at the University. In December 2009 I passed my shelf life and was elected Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town. In January 2010 I found a new, temporary home in the Electrical Engineering Department at UCT. I am currently also an informal collaborator in the Networking Group of Giuseppe Bianchi at the University of Rome II (Tor Vergata).

During my full-time tenure at UCT, I spent several periods of study leave at amongst others, the Universität Dortmund, Universität Erlangen, the Institut National des Télécommunications (INT) in Evry, France and the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory.

I have been a member of IFIP WG 6.1, 6.3 and 7.3 for many years and have been on the Technical Programming Committee of several international conferences. In 1996 I was elected a Senior Member of the IEEE and in 2007 I was asked to represent South Africa on the IFIP Technical Committee for Telecommunications (IFP TC 6) which I did for 3 years before resigning in 2010.

On my arrival at UCT in 1985, I founded the Data Network Architectures (DNA) Group through which, through the years, I supervised 30 MSc and PhD students. Several of the MSc students went on to a doctoral programme at universities such as Oxford, Imperial College, and INT in France, Rome University and Zurich University. Apart from a book on Petri net Theory (2nd Edition, 2002) written with Falko Bause of the University of Dortmund, to date I am the author or co-author of 51 national and international refereed publications as well as s co-author of many local conference papers. I have supervised or co-supervised 3 PhD students and 26 Masters students during my career. My full CV can be found here.

 
 

Recent Publications

(1) with F Bause (2002), "Introduction to Stochastic Petri Net Theory". Vieweg Verlag, Germany in the series Advanced Studies in Computer Science, 250 pages. Second Edition, 2002, ISBN 3-528-05535-9.
 
(2) with P Pileggi (2007), "Performance Modeling of the Wireless Internet". In Proceedings Wireless Rural and Emergency Communication Conference 2007, Rome, Italy.
 
(3) with G Iazeolla and P Pileggi (2008), "Modeling Quality of Service in IEEE 802.16 Networks". Proc. Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks, SoftCOM 2008, pp. 130-134.
 
(4) with A Symington (2009), "A Hardware Test Bed for Measuring IEEE 802.11g Distribution Coordination Function Performance". Proc. 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), pp. 61-67, London, September 2009.
 
(5) with G Iazeolla and P Pileggi (2010), "Developing deep simulation systems to study wireless network performance". Proc. 7th EUROSIM Congress, Sept. 6-10, 2010, Prague, Czech Republic.
 
(6) with H Msiska, T Mundangepfupfu, P Pileggi and A Symington (2009), "Comparing the Results from Various Performance Models of IEEE 802.11g DCF". Computer Networks 54 (2010) pp. 1672-1682.
 
(7) with P Pileggi and G Iazeolla (2011), "Demonstrating the Synergy between CAC and Scheduling in Wireless Networks". International Journal of Modeling, Simulation and Scientific Computing. Submitted.
 
(8) with P Pileggi (2011), "Semi-Markov Process Formulation of IEEE 802.11 DCF Analytic Performance Models". The Computer Journal, Oxford Journals. Submitted.
 
 

Other Interests

I have an Epicurean streak in that I enjoy fine wines, good cigars and creative cooking. Otherwise, by the nature of my academic career, where I have had the privilege to work with many young minds, I am always curious to understand other individuals and who they really are in every sense.

With time I have also come to understand the saying attributed to Albert Einstein, namely that he knew only two things which are infinite: The universe and the stupidity of people, but that he was not so sure about the first.

 
Last updated: January 2011